Alien Contact (64 page)

I didn’t allow myself to think about it.

“Let the original probability resume,” I said.

“Please,” Squidward said.

“Let it go back to the way it’s supposed to be.”

“There are no ‘supposed to be’ probability equations.”

I crossed my arms.

Squidward put his suitcase down. “Then because of what you are you will doom me. My probabilities concluded.”

“Because of what I am.”

“Yes.”

Shuffle.

My name is Brian Kinney, and I am the sum total of the experience inflicted upon me.

But not only that. I hope.

The Tahoe’s deadly acceleration. Sudden synaptic realization across the probabilities:
You are about to murder your wife
. The Vault Of Screams yawns open.

Will
.

Hanging on the wheel, foot fumbling between pedals.

That big green Rubbermaid trash can bouncing over the hood, contents erupting against the windshield. It was just garbage, though.

Then a very sudden stop when the Tahoe plows into the low brick and wrought-iron property wall. Gut punch of the steering wheel, rupturing something inside my body. And don’t forget a side of razor ribs.

Around the middle of my longish convalescence Connie arrives during visiting hours, and eventually a second convalescence begins. A convalescence of the heart. Not mine in particular, or Connie’s, but the one we shared in common. The one we had systematically poisoned over the preceding ten years. Okay, the one
I
had systematically poisoned.

Watershed event.

Happy ending?

It sat in a cold room.

Outside that room I watched a perfectly squared-away marine enter a code into the cipher pad. I was the sum total my inflicted experience, but it was the new math. The door opened, like a bank vault. Andy McCaslin looked at me with a puzzled expression.

He was alone in the room.

manda spotted the alien late Friday afternoon outside the Video Center, on South Main. It was trying to look cool and laid-back, but it simply came across as bewildered and uneasy. The alien was disguised as a seventeen-year-old girl, maybe a Chicana, with olive-toned skin and hair so black it seemed almost blue, but Amanda, who was seventeen herself, knew a phony when she saw one. She studied the alien for some moments from the other side of the street to make absolutely certain. Then she walked over.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Amanda said. “Anybody with half a brain could tell what you really are.”

“Bug off,” the alien said.

“No. Listen to me. You want to stay out of the detention center, or don’t you?”

The alien stared coldly at Amanda and said, “I don’t know what the crap you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. No sense trying to bluff me. Look, I want to help you,” Amanda said. “I think you’re getting a raw deal. You know what that means, a raw deal? Hey, look, come home with me, and I’ll teach you a few things about passing for human. I’ve got the whole friggin’ weekend now with nothing else to do anyway.”

A flicker of interest came into the other girl’s dark, chilly eyes. But it died quickly, and she said, “You some kind of lunatic?”

“Suit yourself, O thing from beyond the stars.
Let
them lock you up again.
Let
them stick electrodes up your ass. I tried to help. That’s all I can do, is try,” Amanda said, shrugging. She began to saunter away. She didn’t look back. Three steps, four, five, hands in pockets, slowly heading for her car. Had she been wrong, she wondered? No. No. She could be wrong about some things, like Charley Taylor’s interest in spending the weekend with her, maybe. But not this. That crinkly-haired chick was the missing alien for sure.

The whole county was buzzing about it: Deadly nonhuman life form has escaped from the detention center out by Tracy, might be anywhere, Walnut Creek, Livermore, even San Francisco, dangerous monster, capable of mimicking human forms, will engulf and digest you and disguise itself in your shape. And there it was, Amanda knew, standing outside the Video Center. Amanda kept walking.

“Wait,” the alien said finally.

Amanda took another easy step or two. Then she looked back over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“How can you tell?”

Amanda grinned. “Easy. You’ve got a rain slicker on, and it’s only September. Rainy season doesn’t start around here for another month or two. Your pants are the old Spandex kind. People like you don’t wear that stuff anymore. Your face paint is San Jose colors, but you’ve got the cheek chevrons put on in the Berkeley pattern. That’s just the first three things I noticed. I could find plenty more. Nothing about you fits together with anything else. It’s like you did a survey to see how you ought to appear and then tried a little of everything. The closer I study you, the more I see. Look, you’re wearing your headphones, and the battery light is on, but there’s no cassette in the slot. What are you listening to, the music of the spheres? That model doesn’t have any FM tuner, you know.

“You see? You may think that you’re perfectly camouflaged, but you aren’t.”

“I could destroy you,” the alien said.

“What? Oh, sure. Sure you could. Engulf me right here on the street, all over in thirty seconds, little trail of slime by the door, and a new Amanda walks away. But what then? What good’s that going to do you? You still won’t know which end is up. So there’s no logic in destroying me, unless you’re a total dummy. I’m on your side. I’m not going to turn you in.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because I’ve been talking to you for five minutes and I haven’t yelled for the cops yet. Don’t you know that half of California is out searching for you? Hey, can you read? Come over here a minute. Here.” Amanda tugged the alien toward the newspaper vending box at the curb. The headline on the afternoon
Examiner
was:

BAY AREA ALIEN TERROR

MARINES TO JOIN NINE-COUNTY HUNT

MAYOR, GOVERNOR CAUTION AGAINST PANIC

“You understand that?” Amanda asked. “That’s you they’re talking about. They’re out there with flame guns, tranquilizer darts, web snares, and God knows what else. There’s been real hysteria for a day and a half. And you standing around here with the wrong chevrons on! Christ. Christ! What’s your plan, anyway? Where are you trying to go?”

“Home,” the alien said. “But first I have to rendezvous at the pickup point.”

“Where’s that?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

“Shit,” Amanda said. “If I meant to turn you in, I’d have done it five minutes ago. But, okay, I don’t give a damn where your rendezvous point is. I tell you, though, you wouldn’t make it as far as San Francisco rigged up the way you are. It’s a miracle you’ve avoided getting caught until now.”

“And you’ll help me?”

“I’ve been trying to. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ll take you home and fix you up a little. My car’s in the lot down on the next corner.”

“Okay.”

“Whew!” Amanda shook her head slowly. “Christ, some people sure can’t take help when you try to offer it.”

As she drove out of the center of town, Amanda glanced occasionally at the alien sitting tensely to her right. Basically the disguise was very convincing, Amanda thought. Maybe all the small details were wrong, the outer stuff, the anthropological stuff, but the alien
looked
human, it
sounded
human, it even
smelled
human. Possibly it could fool ninety-nine people out of a hundred, or maybe more than that. But Amanda had always had a good eye for detail. And at the particular moment she had spotted the alien on South Main she had been unusually alert, sensitive, all raw nerves, every antenna up.